JHL wants to provide more help for personal assistants – branches pilot support persons
Personal Assistant’s Day is celebrated for the first time today, 19 November.
Trade Union JHL develops new approaches to representation of interests and peer support of personal assistants. The union has launched a project to create an assortment of ways to improve the working conditions and employment terms of personal assistants.
One of the approaches that is being developed is training of support persons to JHL’s local branches. The idea is that a support person will help a personal assistant with problems of working life, and the union will support the support person. JHL also works to develop various peer support models, such as different forms of member events.
The new methods are piloted this year and next year in the regions of Southern Finland and Inner Finland.
“After that, we can hopefully deploy these methods in the whole country,” says Senior Bargaining Specialist Laura Tuominen.
Need for new ways of looking after employees’ interests
This new project is very much needed because practices vary a lot in this sector, and workplaces do not have traditional personnel representatives. The National collective agreement for personal assistants (Heta-tes), for example, does not contain provisions for shop stewards.
Moreover, personal assistants hardly ever have the support of a work community because they usually work alone assisting a person with disabilities.
“The traditional models of interest representation wouldn’t necessarily even be workable when the workplace is another person’s home. That’s why we are now creating something new,” Bargaining Specialist Pinja Lumitsalo adds.
JHL’s employees work on this project together with active union members employed in the sector.
Part of JHL’s long-term work for personal assistants
This undertaking started from a support person initiative that JHL’s local branch of welfare sector professionals in Central Finland presented for the Union Council in the autumn meeting in 2023.
“In the present situation, monitoring the terms and conditions of employment in this sector is terribly challenging. An assistant may have four employers, or even more. We need new kinds of interest representation,” says personal assistant Tarja Al Hanan, who is one of the active members in the branch behind the initiative.
Working to promote the interests of personal assistants is not a new thing at JHL. JHL is the only employee union who negotiates on the Heta-tes collective agreement with the employer’s association Heta Union. JHL has managed to improve personal assistants’ terms and conditions of employment in every negotiation round.
Earlier this autumn, JHL achieved a significant interest representation victory when the Heta-tes collective agreement became generally applicable. It means that those personal assistants who work under the employer model of providing personal assistance are entitled to the Heta-tes agreement’s terms and conditions of employment and pay even if their employer is not organised into the employers’ association. This improves the position of thousands of personal assistants.
JHL also negotiates on the terms and conditions of employment for personal assistants as part of the ongoing collective agreement negotiations for the private social services sector
The first Personal Assistants’ Day
Earlier this autumn, JHL achieved a significant interest representation victory when the Heta-tes collective agreement became generally applicable. It means that those personal assistants who work under the employer model of providing personal assistance are entitled to the Heta-tes agreement’s terms and conditions of employment and pay even if their employer is not organised into the employers’ association. This improves the position of thousands of personal assistants.
JHL also negotiates on the terms and conditions of employment for personal assistants as part of the ongoing collective agreement negotiations for the private social services sector
The first Personal Assistants’ Day
One thing that JHL has done to boost the position of personal assistants is launching the Personal Assistants’ Day. It is celebrated for the first time today, 19 November.
The day culminates in an evening event where the audience can enjoy the performance of “Finland’s blindest comedian” Tommi Vänni and the winner of the personal assistants’ writing contest gets awarded.
The President of JHL Håkan Ekström and the CEO of Turva Ville Raunio will also be in the event celebrating personal assistants.
JHL organises the event together with insurance company Turva at Turva’s head office in Tampere.
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